Your right, I'm in the NH, it's a lot softer here. The reason is there is too much soccer influence on the sport because of how big soccer is here. But none of the nh based rugby fans and players will admit it, because that means admitting the game is softer than down in the SH.

My comments aimed at nobody in particular seem to have sent you into a frenzy, whereby you - for reasons beyond my understanding - think I care about your individual upbringing or life experiences? I appreciate that you seem concerned about my own upbringing, but not everybody shares your enthusiasm in others.

The only thing you're right about is my contempt for the upper classes - and damn proud of it. A trait I happen to share with every other well-read, oppressed human. Though I'm sure you'd have it known that there is no institutional oppression against working class people, in sports such as rugby union, or

It's interesting Pretzel that you don't offer any evidence to the contrary. You don't even attempt to offer argument against my own, apart from some anecdotal rubbish, which I would doubt to be true in the first place. A group of posh sorts winning a square-dance with working class people? Only in the dreams of the insecure rich.

Face facts, at elite levels of all sport there is little to no participation from people of privileged backgrounds - they don't have the heart or the hunger for it, in many cases they don't even have the innate athleticism for it. But this runs in stark contrast with NH Rugby Union, where this is little if any elite participation from ordinary citizens. A thinking person would question why that is? Why is it the game is chock full of toff types?

The reason for this is because Rugby Union is still an elite sport that's institutionally supportive of only well-off kids. This cultural hegemony (right down to restrictive beliefs and values) within Rugby, to borrow from Antonio Gramsci, is indisputable.

British Rugby is soft and it's because it's a game domineered over by upper class people. Instead of acknowledging the problem and getting working people involved in the game what happens? The posh sorts try to hold the game back and stop it from getting too athletically, physically-orientated. So when these burly Islanders and Saffas emasculate us we cry that they're dirty. But why are they dirty? Well they're dirty because we say so, and we make the rules. What we say goes.

Look at this season of School of Hard Knocks. Half the team would be semi-professional, some fully professional, if given half a chance. But they are poor and therefore they never got that chance.

You're all kidding yourselves if you think the upper class are half as tough.

In 50 years(after the elite institutions have crumbled) everyone in the England team will be talking in Northern accents and patois. And that won't be coincidental either.

Toughness comes from experience, if you don't have that life experience then generally speaking you're going to lack the toughness. This is why in all full on professional sports (and I don't count northern rugby as a legitimate professional sport) the sports are filled with poor people, raised in humble conditions. Look at sports that are professionalised, how many great upper class boxers, football(American) players are there? Toughness and upper class upbringings are at odds with one another. There are few exceptions.

Whenever there is an even playing field the posh sorts from their posh backgrounds fall behind, primarily because they're mentally weak and haven't dealt with any sort of hardship. The only time this isn't the case is when a sport is institutionally elitist, such as Rugby in the Northern Hemisphere and Australia.

These people are absolutely less tough. They're too nice. They're yellow-bellied. In a brawl Cambridge would get eaten by any working class equivalent.